Over the last hour, it had become painfully apparent to Ian that he would not overcome the abject terror he felt every time one of the scorpions came at him. There had been 41 scorpions in the cavern, and he had forced himself to finish off every last one. The purple glow of the poison had dissipated just after he got the notification stating he had reached level 65 after killing the final monster.
Quickly taking the sloping path that led to the fourth floor, Ian shuddered as a chill ran up his spine at the imagined images of scorpions emerging from solid rock. Some things were better off when they weren’t burned into one’s memory, and Ian didn’t want to think about what type of nightmare fuel respawning scorpions would be for him.
He let out one final shudder as the fear finally began to bleed out of him. It had only taken a bit over an hour to clear the floor, but the entire experience had left him mentally drained. He pulled a piece of beef jerky and a bottle of water from his storage and rested for a moment in the safe passageway. It had been a long time since he had a chance to enjoy beef jerky, and he made a mental note to thank Claire for getting him snacks when he spoke to her next. It helped him regain his focus as he continued his way down to the final floor.
He surveyed an area filled with greenish-blue leaves coming off the cavern walls in a thick carpet. The ivy-like plant gave off a fairly pleasant glow that helped light up the area. Unlike the giant open cavern on floor three, the path ahead opened into a much smaller cavern. The room had three waist-sized round rocks in the middle of the area, but the ivy had covered all the walls and outlined the exit on the other side.
Ian had his spear out as he looked around the room. He didn’t see or hear any enemies, and knew from the courses that enemies were mainly animal or bug-type monsters, occasionally even being low-tier elementals at this level. Taking another sweep of the room, he finally took a step inside.
Ian instantly regretted that decision when the ‘rocks’ he had seen before unfurled into three-foot-tall armadillos. Unlike the normal armadillos, these creatures had what appeared to be a rock-like substance for a shell and extremely sharp claws. As one let out a barking sound at him, Ian saw over a dozen jagged teeth in the creature’s mouth.
He wanted to switch to his sword in the smaller area, but realized he was going to need the penetrating power the angular blade and the mass his spear would provide if he missed the gaps in armor plates—a slashing weapon just wasn’t going to cut it against their defenses.
He started side-stepping as the creatures slowly advanced on him. They had smaller legs than he would have thought, and their extra mass seemed to be slowing them down more than their smaller, real-world cousins.
When his strafing left him with two of the creatures blocked off behind the closest one, he moved forward and thrust his spear. The gap he was aiming for was in-between the creature’s head and shoulder. Instead of hitting the gap, the creature swung its head, causing the spear to be thrown off course and embed itself over three inches into the shoulder armor with a grating sound.
The creature growled and turned towards its damaged side. The movement pulled on the spear, and Ian had to quickly pull it out as it began to flex.
“They aren’t scorpions, Ian. Thrust and re-center quickly so they don’t pull your weapon.” Ian scolded himself. “Arms Master Torres would have smacked me in the back of the head for that mistake.”
During his years in college, he had taken a few weapons courses. As an aspiring essence engineer, he had felt it was imperative to learn how adventurers fought on the off chance that he found himself working for a weapon development firm. He had ultimately ended up specializing in energy and agriculture technologies, but his weapon courses were now the only thing he had to show from his years at college, and unpaid student loans.
Just like his former mentor had taught him, he worked on controlling the movement of the battlefield. He kept his distance and sidestepped at speeds the short legs of the creatures just couldn’t keep pace with.
The creature he had hit was slowly bleeding as it moved and had slowed down a bit more than the others, so it was eventually overtaken and fell to the back of the line. He feigned a thrust at the right side of the closest creature’s hea,d causing it to turn its skull to try to block it with the plate. Once it had committed to the action, Ian immediately changed tactics and thrust for the gap on the opposite side. He was rewarded with the blade easily sinking up to the wings.
The creature bellowed in pain as Ian quickly pulled the sharp blade back out. Blood pumped out of the neck wound, causing the floor around the creature to become liberally coated as it thrashed, blocking the other two from passing it.
Congratulations! You have earned 1 level. You have achieved level 66. You have been awarded 20 skill points!
The creature died, leaving its nearly six-foot-long, three-foot-wide body as a barrier for the other creatures. As they started moving around, Ian capitalized on the confusion to work a thrust into the neck gap for the second creature, causing even more blood to start pouring on the floor as it shrieked in pain.
As he turned to deal with the other one coming around from the other side, he slipped on the blood covering the smooth stone floor. When he hit the ground, he grabbed his spear and used a single arm to try to stab it into the underside of the oncoming creature as it lunged for his legs. He managed a hit, but it just caused the creature to hiss at him and pull back its head to bite down on his leg.
Instead of panicking, Ian brought his foot up and kicked the creature’s head. While the creature was large, its head was only a little larger than his foot. As it made contact, the creature yelped as he saw another notification informing him the second creature had finally perished from blood loss. The temporary stunning effect of his kick gave him a chance to bring both legs up and kick out, pushing the creature back.
Ian rolled and came to his feet, spear left behind on the blood-soaked ground. He quickly pulled his short sword from his storage and began to quickly and carefully give himself distance as the creature recovered. Once he was on the opposite side of the two corpses, he shook himself to get his hands steady. His mind was screaming that his mistake had nearly given him a free ticket to the pain buffet, even as it tried to calm him down enough to fight.
Ian spent the next couple of moments moving counter to the giant armadillo until he finally got back to his spear. He quickly picked it up, but it was too slick to use. Sighing, he stored it and moved away from the blood-covered stone. As the creature separated from the corpses of its friends, Ian threw himself at the creature. He brought his sword across the front of him and made solid contact with the plate on the side of the creature’s skull. Unfortunately, it only left a small superficial gash and failed to draw even a drop of blood.
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The creature snapped at him in retaliation. Caught off guard, Ian barely saved himself from losing a chunk of his arm as he pulled back. He snapped a kick out and hit the creature’s wounded shoulder, which caused it to bellow as it began to move its uninjured side towards him. Seeing an opportunity, Ian closed the gap and rammed the creature as hard as he could. The creature let out a squeal as it was tipped onto its injured side, revealing a fur-covered, unarmored stomach. Ian wasted no time as he brought his sword across and cut deep into the exposed flesh. Once the creature was heavily bleeding, he backed up and waited.
Congratulations! You have earned 1 level. You have achieved level 68. You have been awarded 20 skill points!
Ian sighed in relief as he looked around to find no other threats. He pulled out his spear and went to wipe it off on the fur-covered stomach of the first monster he had killed. While it removed a lot of the extra blood, the remainder was now completely caked with the creature’s fur. He let out a long sigh as he realized that his hands were now also coated in it as well.
“And it smells like cat piss!” Ian exclaimed as the stench hit him. “I feel so stupid!”
Ian looked over his blade again, and he really started mentally kicking himself. He had never reapplied the poison from the scorpions. He had ended up with nearly three dozen vials, so there wasn’t any reason he shouldn’t be using them every chance he got. He was on the last floor of the dungeon, and he had no plans on going back through the scorpion cavern if he could handle the last boss. Looting the creatures, he stored his sword and coated his spear in poison before he continued on his way.
He didn’t make it to the next cavern before he found his next opponent. The armadillo that came towards him was just over half as wide as the passageway and pushed the ivy leaves against the wall as it moved from side to side.
Ian didn’t hesitate this time and quickly closed in with the creature. His first thrust missed the gap and only penetrated about an inch into the creature’s armor. He knew it had penetrated into the flesh underneath by the screech it let loose and the blood that began pouring out. With the narrow hallway, Ian didn’t think the creature would be able to turn around, but was quickly proved wrong as it curled in on itself like a ball and rolled to the side. The ball left a couple of gaps that Ian quickly took advantage of, causing a lot of bleeding as the creature finally stretched back out and began running away from him down the hall.
Ian tried to attack, but the entire backside of the creature was covered in extra-thick plates. Even when his spear sank in two inches, he failed to draw blood. As it ran out of the passageway into the next room, the creature suddenly collapsed. Ian saw it was still breathing, but also noticed the four other monsters now coming towards him. Luckily, he could fight one at a time in the passageways.
Grinning, Ian took a step back and let them come.
~*~*~
“Eighteen freaking caverns. Each with three or four of those walking tanks and one or two of the bastards in the hallways in between.” Ian grumbled as he investigated the final chamber. “And I finally get here to see a horse-sized possum.” Ian furrowed his brows from the barely man-sized entrance to the boss's cavern. “Stop hissing at me, asshole. If you stick your head back in here, I’mma stab you again—and I won’t miss that eye this time either!”
The creature had tried to get the jump on Ian by diving into the pathway when he walked up to peek into the cavern. Luckily, Ian was paranoid by this point and had stabbed the spear into the creature’s face. The hit had been more superficial, leaving a six-inch cut from its snout to under its right eye. It had still caused the opossum to retreat, but it wasn’t fazed by the poison in the same way everything else had been. The creature didn’t even seem to be in very much pain now that the bleeding had slowed.
Taking a deep breath, Ian slowly moved back up to the opening and stepped through. The boss monster was on the other side of the thirty-yard chamber, hissing as it started moving back and forth in agitation. It didn’t have the same amount of armor as the armadillos or even scorpions had, but it was much larger, stronger, and faster.
The creature was supposed to be 14 levels lower than Ian. He had managed to hit level 94 from the exorbitant number of armadillos he had encountered on this path of the dungeon, and the highest monster in this dungeon was supposed to be level 80. Even with their higher levels, the earlier monsters were not bright enough to stop charging at him or get funneled into the entrance of every cavern. They would block each other’s movement, providing him with an easy avenue to dispatch them from blood loss and scorpion venom. The opossum he was currently facing, however, seemed to realize fighting him at the door would be a surefire defeat.
Ian knew that most boss fights weren’t the epic battles that stories made them out to be. Monsters that could survive nearly any hit and dish out fatal damage always killed the hero in real life. Lower-tier dungeons usually had just slightly stronger monsters than what can be found throughout the dungeon acting as bosses, but later tiers set up entire groups to challenge adventurers or contain a challenging scenario that needs to be overcome at the end.
The fight in front of him was going to come down to him, dishing out as much damage as possible while avoiding the creature’s mouth. The claws on its hands and feet were not very long, though they were probably still sharp enough to tear him up pretty good. It was the large teeth that would cause huge amounts of damage if they found a way to reach him.
Ian continued to track the beast as it moved back and forth across the far side of the chamber. As Ian blinked, he opened his eyes to find the creature springing forward at him. It had launched itself into the air to cover the last ten yards, which led to Ian driving his spear into the creature’s chest. The creature’s weight pressed down on the spear, holding the creature at bay when Ian somehow managed to brace himself and stop himself from getting bowled over.
As its paws wrapped around the spear haft, Ian quickly shoved the spear to the side and moved with a purpose. He brought his hands up as his sword appeared before bringing it down in an overhead swing onto the monster’s front leg.
It let out an ear-splitting scream as the sword cut clean through the appendage, paw still wrapped around his spear. The creature tried to bring its mouth around to bite him, causing the spear to be ripped from the creature’s chest, opening a larger wound. Ian threw himself backwards as he swung his sword with one hand, trying to drive the monster back. He missed the creature’s head but left a slash across the bottom of the creature’s neck. It wasn’t deep enough to be fatal by itself, but the monster was now rapidly losing blood from both of its new wounds.
Ian backed up towards the cavern entrance to give himself space as the creature hissed at him. Realizing it was slowing down, the monster made one final rush towards Ian. Holding the sword out in front of him, Ian was bowled over by the creature. Ian ended up on his back with a huge weight on top of him. He had reflexively closed his eyes and braced for the creature’s bite. Instead of pain, he was treated to multiple prompts.
Congratulations! You have earned 3 levels. You have achieved level 97. You have been awarded 60 skill points!
Congratulations! You have defeated the boss of the Turen Crevasse. You have been granted 4 bonus levels. Unable to provide full bonus as user has reached the milestone cap of 100, process milestone rewards to unlock additional leveling. Milestone rewards will be processed upon dungeon exit.
Ian blinked at the messages as his excitement began to build. He hadn’t expected to get any additional reward for hitting level 100. He quickly looted the boss, which had been slowly crushing him, and stored his sword. When he went to store his spear, he found his item storage was too full to carry the extra weight. Realization began to dawn on him, causing him to smile as he thought about how lucrative this was compared to his old job.
The light enveloped him a few seconds later, and he made sure to calmly walk towards the dungeon’s portal entrance. He didn’t want to draw the attention of the other adventurers that were entering the dungeon, which was the only thing stopping him from sprinting the couple of hundred feet to the threshold.
His elation soared as he made his way to a bench to read through his new notifications.
New skill granted: Statistical Synchronization 1/3 (Inherent). Allows the user to boost dedicated party members’ statistics by 10% of the user’s statistics. The buff remains on identified targets indefinitely until the user cancels the effect or the target loses their status as a dedicated party member. User may select 1 target at the current skill level.
“Holy shit…” Ian whispered before looking around to make sure nobody was paying him any attention. Sighing in relief, he got up and started walking towards the metro. He needed to have a long talk with Claire before he continued.
